


call it even

by SeeTheVision



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, Christmas, Inspired by Taylor Swift, M/M, its sad thats the fic, tis the damn season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeTheVision/pseuds/SeeTheVision
Summary: Snow. It was snowing the day Donghyuck left, too.(Donghyuck hasn't been home in years, but that isn't nearly long enough to forget who he left behind.)
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Liu Yang Yang
Comments: 11
Kudos: 55





	call it even

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by tis the damn season by taylor swift

Returning to his hometown was always a bit jarring. For the most part, things were the same, as if plucked from a childhood photo album. It was the little differences—the new gas station on the corner, the yellow house that Donghyuck could have sworn used to be blue—that made the familiar streets feel like a favorite sweater that he'd outgrown

He was so lost in memories that he almost didn’t notice the familiar face staring at him from the other side of the road. Of course, he would be here, it seemed only natural. He was a part of Donghyuck’s past, a part of his childhood, as much as the house he’d grown up in.

But just like the town itself, Yangyang Liu was different. His hair was bleached silver-blonde, falling into his eyes. He watched Donghyuck with a weary sort of sorrow as the snowflakes swirled between them.

Snow. It was snowing the day Donghyuck left, too.

***

The cruel laughter of fate was almost audible in the frosty winter wind buffeting the window. Donghyuck cursed himself for being caught so off guard. He should have guessed that the Lius would be invited to this party, after years of spending holidays with them growing up. He remembered Christmas Eves spent shivering with his window open, leaning out into the space between their houses to talk as loudly as he dared to a similarly freezing Yangyang. He remembered furious snowball fights that left their fingers numb and aching to be curled around mugs of hot chocolate. So many of his holiday memories were centered around Yangyang, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to find him on the sofa with a cup of cider and a ridiculous striped green and red sweater.

Yangyang held his gaze cooly, seeming perfectly relaxed, but even after all this time, Donghyuck could recognize the telltale tension in his shoulders. Neither bothered faking a smile; they still knew each other too well for that.

***

A few months after Donghyuck turned eighteen, he left town on an afternoon bus. The cold gathered teardrops of condensation on the window, blurring his view of the figure standing on the sidewalk. The snow that piled on the curb was dirty and blackened, but a fresh flurry was drifting lazily from the sky. It would cover the streets again, glittering silver in the streetlights, so pristine you’d never guess there was something dark hidden beneath.

The snow was black when Donghyuck left.

When he came back, Yangyang’s hair was silver.

***

Kissing Yangyang was like a highschool fantasy come to life—if Donghyuck ignored the ever-present ache in his chest. He shoved it down as he pressed Yangyang backward onto the old twin-sized bed in a bedroom that was no longer quite his. Yangyang’s fingers tangled in Donghyuck’s hair, his touch sending an electric shiver down Donghyuck’s spine.

They didn’t talk. There wasn’t anything to talk about.

Donghyuck spent years growing up daydreaming about pressing his mouth to Yangyang’s, muffling his sharp tongue, tasting that mischievous smile. But now as he tilted his head, pressing closer, he wished to go back to the way things were. Dancing around their feelings, masking them with jokes and bickering, ignoring the exasperated looks of their mutual friends, talking about anything and everything except the unacknowledged something that always hung in the air between them.

As he learned the way Yangyang liked to be touched, held, kissed, Donghyuck couldn’t help wishing he still knew the way he laughed.

***

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Yangyang didn’t take his eyes from the icy roads. “Thanks for telling me this time.”

Ducking his head, Donghyuck twisted his fingers together, unsure what to say. _I’m sorry_ wasn’t quite enough for someone he’d left standing in the cold three years ago. Besides, what would be the point in apologizing for something he knew would happen again? 

“If I told you,” he managed to whisper, “I might never have left.”

“Would that have been so bad?”

Donghyuck didn’t answer. It was far too late to think about the what-ifs, the road not taken. “Where are we going?” he asked instead.

“You haven’t guessed yet?” The side of Yangyang’s mouth curled up—not a true smile, not the sunshine that would melt the delicate spires of glass crackling at the edges of Donghyuck’s heart. Donghyuck craved that smile, but this would do.

The town had changed, but as Donghyuck watched the buildings go by the familiarity of the route tugged at his memory. “Oh.”

The high school seemed so small, like a gingerbread house covered in snow. Funny to think that, just a few years ago, Donghyuck’s world barely extended past those brick walls.

If he stopped to think about it, he might be tempted to say that his world was much smaller than that, about the size of a certain teenage boy.

“Why are we here?”

Yangyang shrugged, pushing open the door and hopping out of the truck. “For old time’s sake.”

In the years since they had graduated, no one had bothered to fix the lock on the back door to the gym. All it took was a good yank before the hinges creaked open and ushered Donghyuck into the past.

Pushing Yangyang against a locker and slotting their lips together was nearly as magical as he’d always imagined.

***

“Did you know I was in love with you?” asked Yangyang. It wasn’t an accusation, just a simple question. Donghyuck wished he would shout, cuss him out for how cowardly he’d been. He didn’t deserve to be handled with such delicacy.

Time had made him braver, if only just a bit, so he lifted his head and met Yangyang’s steady gaze. Sometime in the years since they last met, he’d grown taller than Yangyang. This realization, more than any of the other things that changed while Donghyuck wasn’t watching, knocked the breath out of him.

“I knew I was in love,” Donghyuck managed, throat raw. “I was in love, and that scared me.”

“You were an idiot.”

“I know.”

“I would have come with you.”

A breath crystallized in the air, snowflakes and tears catching on eyelashes, glittering. “I know. That was the problem.”

The remnants of the holidays lingered in the town like scraps of forgotten wrapping paper, but the watery winter sunlight no longer lent magic to the light-filled trees and red-decked storefronts. 

If Yangyang had asked, Donghyuck would have stayed.

The windows fogged as the bus pulled away from the curb. Yangyang didn’t stay to watch it go, but Donghyuck’s eyes clung to his figure, growing smaller and smaller until he disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> um... merry christmas?  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/see_thevision)  
> [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/riahsvision/)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/see_thevision)


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